Disrupting Legal in Six Minute Increments
March 21, 2013
I spoke with Matt Homann and JoAnna Forshee, producers of the annual LexThink.1 legal innovation conference, which is being held in Chicago on Wednesday April 3rd on the eve of the ABA Techshow. Homann is the well-known founder of LexThink, a legal innovation consultancy, as well as the creator of the popular [non] billable hour blog. Forshee is the CEO of InsideLegal, which she describes as “the insider’s guide to doing business in legal technology.”Homann noted that LexThink.1 started 4 years ago as Ignite Law. Participants have 6 minutes (as in one-tenth of an hour of billable time) and 20 slides, which rotate every 18 seconds, to convey their ideas on this year’s theme – disruption. Prior sessions focused on the future of law, the future of legal tech, and client service. (I had the privilege of participating in the inaugural event in 2010, with a session called: What I Learned About the Future of Legal Marketing From Playing Wii Bowling With a 4 1/2-year old.)Ten speakers selected by “more than one thousand votes cast” online will cover a variety of topics ranging from Big Data or Big Brother (Eric Hunter) and Don’t Do What You’re Good At (Jay Shepherd) to Knowing the Unknowns (Roe Frazer) and LegalZoom is Eating Legal’s Lunch (Mark Britton). The only participant, who has appeared in all four productions is Will Hornsby, who will be discussing Gaming the System: Are lawyers ready to game-up?Forshee notes that speakers typically rate the difficulty of the experience at about an eight on a ten-point scale and Homann suggests that in addition to practice, participants should focus on their transitions to get comfortable telling a story in equal segments.Those interested in following the sessions on Twitter can search for the Hashtag: #lexthink.